ANOTHER DAMN POP CULTURE BLOG!!

I’ll tell you who doesn’t, me. I’ve never been a fan of The Transformers, Godzilla, or any variation of the two. You either have a guy in a cheesy rubber suit stomping cardboard buildings, or motion capture CGI that always looks a bit off. Then, every single one of these movies has the obligatory shot of someone stopping  to look over their shoulder as the big bad whatever bears down on them. I just never got it.

Why would someone who doesn’t like this type of movie go see Pacific Rim? The first reason is Guillermo del Toro, who’s one of my favorite directors. His movies are always original and visually amazing. Which means if his name is attached to something, I see it. The second reason, because Sons of Anarchy is the most badass show on tv. Since both Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman from SOA star in Pacific Rim that cinched it for me.

So here’s the basic story, giant monsters called Kaiju appear one day out of a portal on the bottom of the ocean. Then they do what all giant monster do, smash the hell out of anything in front of them. After the regular military is decimated, several countries build huge robots called Jaegers to defend against the Kaiju. The Jaegers are controlled by two pilots who are linked through a neural bridge allowing them access to each other’s thoughts so they can work as one.

Now this may sound like a bad Syfy channel movie, but it’s light years beyond that and has much more going on. There’s an oddball subplot with two scientists in an underground lab trying to create a “neural handshake” with a Kaiju brain. One of them, played by Charlie Day, is so enamored with the Kaiju he has tattoos of his favorites. Then there’s Perlman’s gangster, who sells Kaiju parts on the Asian black market  to cure things like impotence. All this adds  just the right amount of humor to the movie.

I was really blown away by the awesome special effects. The Kaiju/Jaeger movements seemed to take a great effort as if these things actually weighed several tons. Do you know what that means? You could tell what was happening during the action sequences! I don’t know who came up with the crazy idea that the audience would actually WANT to see everything, but they deserve a raise. This made for much more realistic action scenes. Well, as realistic as robot/monster fights can be.

Here’s the bottom line, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but Pacific Rim is a helluva lot of fun. That’s way more than I can say about the other sci-fi movies this summer (Yes, I’m talking about you Star Trek and After Earth). And while it didn’t change my mind about seeing  the upcoming Transformers 4, this is one of the few recent movies I would go to see again.